lomonaaeren

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Chapter Twenty-One—The Limits of Certainty

Harry is behaving so much better now.

Draco was keeping his eyes on the book in front of him, which described dreambane and the various potions that contained it, but now and then he darted the edge of a glance at Harry, who sat across the table from him in the library connected to Harry’s rooms. Harry was manifestly not keeping his eyes on the book in front of him. He shifted from moment to moment, grumbling under his breath and kicking one leg out as if he would relieve the tension of his shoulders that way. Now and then he sighed as if the mere fact of study were hurting his head. Then he would reach out and turn a page in the book as though it were weighted with stones.

Draco normally wouldn’t have found that sort of thing conducive to study, but he had studied dreambane before, for his exams in the Potions mastery, so this was more revision than a new learning experience. He was more interested in the way that Harry had relaxed enough around Draco to show his boredom and fear. He no longer thought that he had to be on his best behavior to placate the Malfoys.

And he’s taking lessons from Rogers, and he’s accepting the food that we give him, and he’s actually making use of the bed now. Draco would have preened himself about that last if he’d been a bird. As it was, he could smooth a finger over his lips and watch Harry without Harry noticing. Despite the way he sometimes looked at Draco, Harry was too involved in his own discontent and discomfort to notice anything else. We’ll turn him into a proper Malfoy yet.

Draco tried to control the smugness he felt and remind himself that it could all backfire—for one thing, Harry might not take being told that he was a Malfoy in behavior as well as name now kindly—but he couldn’t. He needed some good news, damn it. He had learned that Harry was almost certainly abused by his Muggle guardians, his father was the victim of enemies more clever than he had surmised, he would have to send one of the house-elves out for more ingredients for the Jason’s Draught he was brewing to repay his father’s friends, and his mother was in a strange mood today, quiet and slant-eyed. He deserved to be able to look at the man he was falling in love with and know that he would be better-fed and better-protected when he became a Malfoy than he ever had been in his life before.

Harry hissed under his breath and gave an uncomfortable little wriggle he probably wasn’t even aware of. His shoulders hunched like a vulture’s wings. Draco eyed them sideways and then stood, moving quietly around the table, reaching the other chair just as Harry started to stand.

He put his hands on Harry’s shoulders and leaned over to whisper into his ear. “Leaving so soon? And here I was just about to ask you if you wanted a massage. Your shoulders have been tempting me for the past half-hour.”

Harry started to turn his head and open his mouth, doubtless to complain, because that was what he did, but then he slumped forwards and groaned instead. Draco smiled triumphantly. He did know how to give a good massage, a legacy of having Blaise Zabini as a lover for two months. Blaise had been insistent that anyone who stayed with him would know how to give a good massage. And, at the time, Draco had been desperate to stay with him, because Blaise was the cleverest and most skilled lover he had ever had.

Now, he couldn’t remember why that had made such a difference. What was Blaise compared to Harry? What was a pair of restless hands and an inventive tongue next to the way that Harry’s eyes flashed when he was charging some obstacle head-on, determined to knock it to the ground like a mountain goat using his horns?

But he had at least left Draco with one excellent legacy, since Harry was moaning and dropping his head forwards on the table as if he wanted to go to sleep. The sight of him enjoying this so much was enough to make Draco harden again. He had to swallow hard to resist the impulse to frot against the back of the chair, a few inches from Harry’s spine. He fixed his eyes on the way Harry squirmed and sighed instead, and went on stroking and digging deep and probing for the tension and working it away.

Of course, just when he was really beginning to enjoy this as much as Harry was, Harry pushed himself back from the table. “You could have fooled me,” he said. “I thought you were concentrating absolutely on that potions book.”

“I have the ability to absorb information and think about something else both at once.” Draco let his laughter, partially at himself, into his voice. He had never felt less capable of managing multiple tasks than he did at the moment. He wanted to lay Harry down on the table and start learning his body the way Harry had tried learning the books. “Amazing, I know.”

“It is,” said Harry, and his voice held a drugged honesty that pleased Draco very much. Just for that, he used both hands in a circular motion that had always managed to soothe Blaise’s temper after a hard day of soaking in his hot tub and quarreling with his mother. Harry hissed, and Draco saw his eyes briefly roll back in his head. “You’re amazing,” he whispered.

“So you say right now,” Draco said, dizzy with relief and desire and amusement. “I also want to make you scream it, whimper it, and whisper it into my ear when you’re so sated that you don’t think you can move again.” He bowed his head and licked the back of Harry’s neck. Harry shuddered and arched as if he wanted to shrug off the touch and welcome it at the same time. “I’m told that I’m a more than competent lover.”

Dangerous, perhaps, to press so fast…but he’s doing so well in the other aspects of being a Malfoy that I thought he would still have trouble with by this time. I think he’s ready. Besides, I want him. And Draco had put up with a lot in the last few days, God knows. The list of things he needed relief and distraction from ran through his head again, and he growled and rubbed his erection against the wood of the chair, wishing it were more yielding.

Harry’s thoughts seemed to have been running down an entirely different course. He had an authoritative tone to his voice when he said, “Draco, stop now.”

Draco stopped the massage, but Harry hadn’t specifically referred to his other behavior. He kissed the back of Harry’s neck again, wishing he could cast a nonverbal spell that would summon extra warmth to his lips. The warmth would melt into Harry’s muscles, relaxing them and making him think of other things—

Harry shook his head, and hit Draco’s nose with his skull when he did. Draco couldn’t keep the irritated curse behind his lips. At least Harry sounded properly contrite when he said, “I’m sorry.” But he at once added, “But I want to speak to you face-to-face,” which didn’t sound very promising.

Draco stepped away far enough so that Harry could turn around and face him. Harry didn’t rise to his feet, though, as Draco had thought he might after that little speech. Instead, he braced his arms on the back of the chair and took several quick breaths like a recovering racer. His hair hung in his face, making his eyes hard to read.

Draco leaned his hip against the table and tossed Harry his best injured look. It didn’t cost him much effort when his nose genuinely hurt.

“I’m sorry,” Harry repeated. One more deep breath, and he was racing down a tumble of words. “Listen. Every other relationship I’ve had has ended because I couldn’t be what the people involved needed: a hero, or a caretaker, or flexible enough, or a passionate enough lover. It’s more than pleasant of you to offer me what I need, and to do it so well. But I don’t know if I can offer you the same thing. Have you considered whether I can really give you anything beyond companionship from someone who’s part of the same family? What tastes of yours do I fulfill? What do I do that attracts you? I don’t understand the same pure-blood customs or have the same ideals, you know that already. I can learn them, but that’s not the same thing as knowing them from birth. I haven’t even spent that much time on you, compared to the time I’ve spent trying to heal Lucius. Are you sure you want this? Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather have a hard shag from someone who understands you better and gives you more than a physical pull?”

Draco sat there, blinking. He felt as if someone had reached out and slapped him hard across the face.

Harry was worried about that? He was fitting in so well at the moment, and he was worried about that?

Or, perhaps even more to the point, he possessed so many talents, such strength, such beauty, and such stubbornness—stubbornness that had kept him from giving in to Draco right away and thus boring him, as had happened with several of his lovers in the past—and he still thought he couldn’t be what Draco needed?

Draco wondered for a moment where he would find the words to explain the mess to him. Especially because he doubted Harry would take him at his word when he began. Harry was clinging to the ideas the Muggles had planted in his head, that he was not worth anything and that anyone’s love for him was conditional. He had to do something to earn it, and he never seemed to think he had done enough. Draco might reassure him, but those reassurances would probably only last until he was out of sight.

In the end, honesty was the only refuge, as his mother had foreseen.

Damn her, anyway.

“If you were anyone else,” Draco said at last, “I would call you a manipulative brat fishing for compliments.”

Harry stared at him. Now it was his turn to look as though someone had just tried to strike him between the eyes.

“But you really are stupidly noble enough to believe everything you just said to me,” Draco said in a contemplative tone. He folded his arms behind his head, keeping his eyes more on the wall than on Harry. He could approach this serious matter best by pretending that it wasn’t so serious. “All right. I never thought I would have to bare my soul twice in confession inside a week—it’s rare enough that my mother and father get to hear about it—but you’re worth it.”

“Look, Draco.” Harry pushed himself back in the chair, away from Draco. His arms shook as he folded them across his chest, and Draco felt a distant pity. He has to push everyone away, even someone he knows wants him. He can give love, but he can’t receive it. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I never meant to cause you pain. You can just—“

“Do shut up,” Draco said. “I need to think about how to phrase this, and you aren’t helping with your chatter.” He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if he were staring at the ceiling through his eyelids. Maybe he could pretend that he was talking to himself, rather than to a nervous audience who might well disdain his words.

“All right,” Draco said at last, without opening his eyes. “I told you that I thought your nobility was an act. And then I learned it wasn’t, because I was watching your face when you cast the Heart’s Blessing spell. You never hesitated. You reached out with your life force and your blood to protect someone you had every reason to hate.

“I had dreamed sometimes of finding a lover like that, but I knew I never would, because someone like that would have no reason to become my friend or my lover in the first place.” He grinned then, remembering a few wide-eyed Potions mastery students who had tried to do him favors. “The few people I knew who had a chance of developing their self-sacrificing instincts had to drop them when they found out what being surrounded by former students of Slytherin House meant. But I wanted someone I could trust, as I could only trust my parents. That’s a simple desire, isn’t it? One that millions of people have every day, and can gratify whenever they want.” He swallowed against the bitterness that wanted to overcome him. This was part of the price to pay for being pure-blooded. If one could only be safe in one’s home, surrounded by one’s family, it was rather disingenuous to assert that one also wanted to be able to trust random strangers.

“I’ll not deny that I also wanted someone capable of standing next to me and protecting me—“

“So did Xavier,” Harry snapped, and Draco choked on the comparison. “I want this too, Draco, but I’ve already seen what happened when someone needed me to be a hero, which I’m not anymore, and—“

“Shut up, I said.” Draco opened one eye and glared at him. Harry didn’t look chastened enough. Well, Draco would have to hope that his next words would do it. “Yes, you’re capable of protecting me, just as I’m capable of protecting you. What I really didn’t want was some fainting flower or someone who assumed he needed to wait on me hand and foot and never let me do anything for myself. And unfortunately, I met many specimens of one sort or another in circles of society obsessed with power dynamics, which I often travel in.” He felt familiar irritation, then. Pure-bloods spent so much time around power that they should understand it better than other wizards. Instead, what Draco had found was that they tended to pursue the extremes, the dominance and submission, and ignore the rich, complex, constantly changing ground in the middle. “But you can gratify that desire, too. You have power, you wield it, but you’re not obsessed with it. You even have more than one kind of power, because you have a Healer’s hands as well as a fighter’s wand.” He hoped Harry would hear innuendo in those words, but from the way Harry gaped at him in shock, he was too busy being stunned by the baring of Draco’s soul. Well, that was also an acceptable reaction.

“And you’re part of my family now. I can relax around you as I can’t around others.” Draco smiled, and reveled in the sheer relief that bathed him. This was one less enemy to watch his back around, and more than that, it was someone whose friendship and companionship he had longed for since they met. “Add to that that I find you physically attractive, stubborn enough to intrigue as well as infuriate me, and rather cleverer than I’d expected, and I’d say that yes, this will be more than a quick shag or a disappointing relationship that lasts a few months.”

Harry licked his lips, staring at nothing. Draco watched him and wished he could know what was going on in his head.

That’s the real reason I want him to be a Malfoy. Not because I want to control him, but because if he thinks more like me, then I’ll understand him better, and these long times of not knowing where in the world he gets a certain perception or a certain way of thinking or acting or being will cease.

“All right,” Harry said softly, but Draco was listening hard enough for it that he heard the words like a shout. “I’ll try.” He grinned suddenly. “And I think I’ve been rather remiss in an activity we’ve already shared.”

“What?” Draco felt his breathing speed up and his eyes widen. It cost him an effort not to hide it, but he made that effort. If Narcissa was right, honesty was the way to win Harry’s heart, and Draco didn’t want to hide arousal from him, of all things.

“Kissing,” Harry said, and stood up and cradled Draco’s head, his fingers running through his hair. Draco swallowed and gazed up at him, wordless. Harry leaned in and kissed him.

It was beautiful beyond reckoning when Harry’s tongue entered his mouth. It was sweet and salty and warm, but Draco wasn’t one to let a lover have it all his own way, especially someone like Harry, who needed to be taken care of so badly. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders and returned the kiss, twice as powerfully, twice as demandingly. Harry gave a little laugh of delight into his mouth and partnered Draco, letting him take control since he wanted it, but snatching it back again the moment Draco faltered.

Harry shoved him backwards in small hops, and then they toppled over the library table and to the floor. Harry twisted to cushion Draco like the idiot he was. Draco still grunted as all the breath was driven out of his lungs. He gasped to get it back again, and then began to laugh. The implications of their position hadn’t escaped him.

“Anyone might think you liked being pinned beneath me,” he said. He extended his limbs languidly to the sides, grasping Harry’s wrists with his hands, Harry’s legs with his legs.

“Anyone might think you talk far too much and imagine audiences watching you when you should be concerned with the judgment of someone far closer to you,” Harry retorted, and began kissing Draco again, apparently because he found words boring at the moment. Draco could understand that sentiment. He plunged his tongue into Harry’s mouth and moved his hands to his shoulders, for the sheer delight of feeling himself pin something stronger than mere hands. Harry wrapped his legs around Draco’s hips, and Draco thrust forwards, his erection finding the contact it wanted at last.

After that, there were a few moments that he was ashamed to say blurred for him. He wanted to wank Harry off, or suck him off, or at least see his cock, but he seemed unable to take his hands from Harry’s shoulders in any useful way. He was stroking and caressing him through the cloth instead, and enjoying the darting, endless motions of his tongue. Yes, when he wanted, Harry could be as sexual as anyone else.

More so, in fact, considering the number of lovers he’s had.

Draco angrily pushed the thought aside. He would not listen to it. Harry’s past lovers weren’t here now, and he was.

Still, it did make him want the privileges that those other men, and women, had had. So he bit at Harry’s throat, which made him blink and arch his neck, and then slid a hand down between his robes.

Harry pushed his hand away.

You have got to be fucking kidding me, Draco wanted to say, but he had never been one to use words where gestures would do. He nipped Harry again and drew his limbs back towards his body, so it would settle more heavily. “Don’t tell me you’re about to run off just when things are getting interesting, Harry,” he whispered.

Harry did shiver, but his eyes remained focused and his voice clear. “I don’t like to, but we need to talk more about what we’ll do to heal Lucius. Do you think you’ll be able to brew the potion?”

Draco blinked and stared at him. For fuck’s sake. Perhaps swearing would have been more satisfying after all. “Of course,” Draco managed to say, when he had got over his small bout of anger that Harry doubted him. “I have most of the ingredients, and I’m certain I can purchase the others without our enemies knowing of them.”

Harry nodded. His eyes were astoundingly determined and clearer than Draco would have liked, given what they’d just been doing. “All right. Then that leaves my part of the task.”

“To study Healing magic?” Draco let his limbs weigh a little more again. “You can do that later.” He reached down with his hands to tilt Harry’s head and down with his lips to nip the skin beneath his ear. It was a sensitive spot, and from the way Harry started and groaned, not one that anyone else had explored before.

“No,” Harry said. His voice was breathless at first, but steadied as he pushed through the words. When he heard them, Draco understood why. “I need a second opinion on the Mirror Maze, the way the spells connect, and unexpected ways the dreambane might influence them. That means going to Healer Pontiff.”

And Draco was thinking in an instant of the way that the magic used on Lucius might be used on Harry by Lucius’s mysterious enemies if Harry went near the hospital. One of those enemies, at least, had studied Healing magic.

No.

He grabbed Harry’s shoulders and pinned them again, quite willing to hold him with physical force if he couldn’t do it any other way. “No,” he snapped. “Are you mad? That would give our enemies a prime chance to strike at you.”

“They can’t expect me to come back to St. Mungo’s so randomly,” Harry said, as if he thought he was being reasonable. “They have no way of learning what happens inside these walls.” He paused, thoughtfully nibbling his lip, as if he were reconsidering that, but Draco glared at him and he continued. “And they may try to watch and follow me, but so what? All I’d have to do is Apparate back to the Manor, and I’d be safe again. I can blast through anti-Apparition wards when I have to.”

If you have to. But why should you place yourself in danger in the first place? That’s what he doesn’t understand. There are better ways to do things, and I thought he was learning them.

Draco could feel the disappointment curdling the desire that still waited in his throat and belly. Trust Harry to start questioning his lessons just when he was thoroughly starting to use them.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Draco pointed out as calmly as he could. “When you’re in danger, you retreat into your fortress and pull the drawbridge up behind you. You don’t go prancing around inviting people to assassinate you.”

Harry only shoved at his shoulders, as if Draco was the one not making sense. “I need to consult with Healer Pontiff—“

“You could do that by owl!” So simple. Do I have to think of everything?

“And then there’s the chance of the owl getting intercepted,” Harry said. “Not to mention that there’s more time for something to go wrong with Lucius whilst we wait for her reply. At least I’ll get an answer more quickly if I visit her.”

And you could die.

The mere possibility was not to be borne.

Draco shook his head. “Rogers,” he said, and went on immediately, because their oldest and most faithful house-elf would have come the instant he was summoned. “Make sure that Harry stays within the house.”

“Yes, Master Draco.”

There. Now Harry can’t say I don’t care about him, when I’m taking such extreme measures to protect him—

Harry threw him across the room. Draco rolled so that the fall was not as bad as it could have been, but he still smacked his head against the leg of the table. He ignored the ache, though, because Harry was standing up, and his anger was stronger than the pain.

“You have no right to do this to me,” Harry said. “Protecting me when I’m being stupid is one thing—“

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.” Draco brushed dust off his robes and sat up himself. He wondered if he could scowl Harry into compliance. They’d been doing so well. What had changed? Why had Harry been content to obey Draco’s instructions in the matter of food and robes and becoming a Malfoy, and not this? Why was something so sensible as preventing danger to his life impossible to listen to?

“I am not.” Harry surged to his feet. “I was stupid to refuse sleep and food. I see that now. That’s why I gave in, because you made your point and I would have resisted out of sheer bloody-mindedness if I had continued to resist. But in this case, I can do something—“

“Not the right thing.” Harry, please. You’ve got to see that.

“You can’t keep me a prisoner here!” Harry said. His face was red, and Draco found it hard to meet his eyes; they were as mad and feral as a beast’s. “You’ll lose me if you try, and I thought that wasn’t what you wanted.”

Draco might have hesitated that, but it was better Harry hate him for a short time and then stay alive. It would only be a short time, Draco knew. They cared too much about each other for it to be otherwise.

“I trust my ability to keep you alive,” he said, “and to persuade you to come round again after you’ve had your little tantrum. I don’t trust you to stay alive if you leave the Manor right now.”

Harry Apparated through the Manor’s wards.

Even given his new connection with the family and the way they had adopted him into their house, he should not have been able to do that. He hadn’t been lying about his ability to defeat anti-Apparition wards.

Draco knew he was gaping, and what he hated more than showing his emotions to Harry like that was the fact that, by the time he thought to lunge forwards and grab Harry’s sleeve, he was already gone.

Chapter 22.